Vanguard vs the 800 Pound Gorilla
Posted by Stropp on February 1, 2007World of Warcraft is indisputably the 800 pound Gorilla of the MMORPG ecosystem. It has a worldwide subscriber base of over 8 million players. It has just released an expansion pack that sold 2.4 million copies in the first 24 hours of release. It’s going strong and taking all comers.
Can anyone tell me then why Sigil Games and Sony Online Entertainment released Vanguard: Saga of Heroes in its current state, and against the recommendations of its beta test community?
In spite of some of the things that I’ve read about Vanguard, I decided to give the game the benefit of the doubt. I went to Sony’s web site and purchased the digital download. I then proceeded to download about seven gigabytes of install files. Once the files were downloaded I started the install. Unfortunately the downloads didn’t go well and the install failed. I re-downloaded the two corrupted files, two gigabytes each, and then managed a successful install. Yay!
Upon starting the game, familiar Sony Launcher dialog appeared and checked all the files before downloading the first update. Incidentally, the launcher always checks the files on startup even if nothing as changed. It’s a bit of a pain since it delays getting into the game. To be fair Everquest 2 does this as well.
When the game finally launches the next problem occurs. The screen blanks and the monitor gives me an Invalid Input message. This means that the video card is talking to the monitor such that the monitor can’t understand the signal. Okay. Alt-Tab doesn’t work. Restart the computer. The next attempt is better. The monitor still flashes up the message, but it quickly disappears and the game boots up normally.
Vanguard has a decent selection of races and classes. All up there are twenty races and eighteen classes. I created a Vulmane Dread Knight called Stropp. The character creation provides a whole lot of sliders to tweak your characters appearance. I think this is where it scores a point over World of Warcraft. I like lots of choice.
Getting into the game after creating my character was pretty easy. There was a little bit of lag, but it wasn’t too bad. I didn’t see many other players either, but being in an Oceanic timezone that’s not unusual. I did the first few quests without any problems, no complaints there.
Where I do have complaints is the user interface graphics. Every time I opened a user interface panel, it opened with completely corrupted textures. Random coloured snow isn’t something you want to see in a user interface. Moving my mouse over the panel caused it to resize and then display properly. This effect reminded me of some problems I had in Neverwinter Nights 2 before I updated my graphics drivers, which by the way are currently up to date.
The graphics didn’t really impress me either. I couldn’t play the game over the balanced setting, and on this setting I thought the graphics and textures were somewhat dull. My machine is just over a year old, custom built with a 3.4 processor, 1GB ram, and a 6600 GT video card. Not exactly cutting edge stuff, but it plays EQ2 like a dream, and EQ2 looks much better than Vanguard.
One part of the game that I did think was very well done was the Diplomacy mini-game. Sigil’s idea to use a card battle game to allow players to engage in non-combat gameplay is very innovative in the MMO gamespace. It’s always irked me that World of Warcraft, amongst other MMOs, implements non-combat gameplay in the most basic crude terms. Case in point, WoW’s fishing. That should have been implemented as a mini-game. Vanguard scores high here.
I haven’t really done more than scratch the surface of Vanguard yet. I’ve only spent a few hours, and have done a few quests. I want to spend some more time in the game and experiment with the crafting. I’d like to do a bit more adventuring.
Now back to my question. Why did Vanguard get released so early?
There are a substantial number of reasonably high profile games coming out in the next few months. These games, Age of Conan, Lord of the Rings, Stargate, Tabula Rasa, are all looking at World of Warcraft. They are all aiming to steal a few bananas from that big monkey. The competition is heating up.
It’s really important to impress your customers early. First impressions do count, and bad press can hurt. If your players are faced with bugs, they are going to complain. If there are other choices, they’ll take those.
So why release a game that is simply not ready?
Never did like any other mmorpgs than WOW. Can you ever beat WOW. Can you ever make a game that beats 7million subscribers and has such an addictive quality? I think not
I have added a link to your blog from mine because I like yours a lot. I hope this is ok. The link is at:http://worldofwarcraftguru.blogspot.com/Keep up the great blog!
Hi Sam, thanks for dropping by, and thanks for the link. There’s no problem with that.
I suspect that some day, someone will come up with a WoW-Killer, possibly even Blizzard themselves. No one remains on top forever.
If other companies want to take on Blizzard, they will need to produce a MMO that is polished, minimal bugs, and plays well. I think this is possible. I think it’s possible to come up with a game that beats WoW. It just has to be good.
Good info; thanks for posting it. I keep thinking about whether or not to try it (partly afraid I’ll like it).
I’d be interested to hear if you find yourself wanting to play it more as time goes by or if it’s just a novelty.
Delaney, glad you liked the info, I’ll add to it as I go along. I reckon it will be good to add post some details on specific areas of Vanguard to give a better idea of what it’s all about.
I know what you mean about being afraid to like it. So many games. So little time.
just played vanguard for 3 days now and just canceled my subscription for it now. As u say, this game IS NOT DONE….im not gonna write a list about the bugs ive encountered, but just say this game is not playable at its state.And grouping with ppl in this game is strangely boring, not because of the players themselves….but if u have a grp of 6 ppl pluss 3-4 mobs on the screen everything will stutter!And the really funny thing about that is that the graphics isnt that good….graphics could be best described as in same class as EQ2. All in all i think sigil have failed big time, im waiting for age of conan!
oh and yea…forgoti have 1900 ati card with 512 ram and 2 gigs of ram etc…there is no reason for this game to stutter on this rig
Hey Jimbo,
I’ve tried to keep playing, but I’m with you. Vanguard isn’t really grabbing me. When I get some time I’ll set aside a day or two of play and write something up.
I can tell you now though, it looks like crap on my system. I have a widescreen monitor with a native resolution of 1440×900 which makes EQ2 and WoW look good. For some reason though, Vanguard insists on setting the games resolution to 1280×800. Nothing I’ve done has fixed this. The game never displays on my systems native res and looks poor quality as a result.
Hey guys,right now, I am standing in front of decision to buy Burning Crusade or Vanguard. From comments so far, I think I know your answer, but… I dont wanna pay 35€ for expansion of game I actually dont like, you know I played WoW for about year, its great game, actually best mmo so far for me, but I think I had it enought. So I am lookning for something else, something next-to-play. So can you help me to decide?
Kokr,
Sorry its taken so long to respond, I’ve had few issues with my network (along with other things) this past week.
If you don’t want to buy the BC, then don’t. Your game time is to have fun, not to play something you don’t want to play.
As for Vanguard. I’d probably recommend waiting for a bit longer, especially if you are someone who gets frustrated over bugs and other issues easily. But if you really want to play Vanguard, by all means do so. I think it has potential to be a great game, and if the devs can fix some of the issues in the next months, then it might well be.
I think the problem is that by releasing the game in an unfinished state, they have hurt themselves in taking on WoW, and the other upcoming games out there.
That’s another thought. If you can wait a few more months, LoTRO looks promising, and might be worth the wait.
Wow is a game for anybody. Everybody can play it and own it. It is like playing in very-easy mode. Comparing a game that is set in hard mode is not really a good justice. Hard game will not be love by all. So, hard game cannot compete with very-easy game. A lot of people can play a very-easy game. Not so much for a hard game. You want a hard game? Vanguard is the best so far. WoW is in very-easy mode to sells a lot of game. 7 millions subscriber don`t say that game is better then DaoC or Eq or anything else… it simply say that anybody can play it and enjoy it. When human face difficulty, and cannot own them, they cry and don`t love and stop playing. Fine!
When I beat contents in Vanguard, I feel that what I had done cannot be done by all. And this is really more rewarding than XP, loot or level. Jourdelune
Jourdelune,
I wouldn’t say that WoW is an easy mode game, it’s a lot more accessible to ordinary players. That and the fact that Blizzard took out some of the more unfun parts like nasty death penalties and naked corpse runs helps a lot too. It’s way more casual friendly. If you like games that are hardcore friendly, that’s fine. But it doesn’t make the hardcore friendly game better than the casual friendly game.
But I’m not sure you got the point of my original post. I believe Vanguard can be a good, even a great, game. It’s just not ready. I loaded up the LotRO beta last night, and this game with 2 months left in beta is in a far more complete state than Vanguard was on release. At least that’s my impression with a few hours play.
If the Vanguard devs had listened to their beta testers, and waited a couple more months and polished their game, then perhaps they would attract a few more WoW subscribers.
At this point I am looking for a new MMO title to play. Vanguard was one of the latest titles I wanted to check out, and now I am not too sure whether I want to buy it or not. But I do want to give it whirl like I did so many MMO’s ever since UO.
Vanguard in reference to WoW I can just say, the reason why WoW is such a tremendous success is because of the following:
-Blizzard. This studio is well known for producing very complete, very polished products. The Warcraft series, Diablo, Starcraft, all titles that are popular today. More importantly, bugs and game breaking issues were very limited with Blizzard products.
-Gameplay wise it appeals to about "everyone" because it offers content for both the hardcore and the casual player. It offers content for the PvE crowd as well as the PvP crowd
-Coherent story line / lore of the game world, again this appeals to those who want to emerge in a world in which things have a true meaning based on its lore.
Of what I gather, Vanguard misses some of these elements. The game world seems beautiful visually but lacks coherent content, story and lore wise. Vanguard seems to aim at the hardcore player who can spend the amount of time required to advance. Regardless I’m very tempted to give it a try. I’m much like I want to see and experience that game myself and not go blindly by what others say.
It’s true what some of you say. The hurried release rush of Vanguard probably damaged the game more than anything. But in that respect, what’s new from the folks over at SoE. SoE has screwed up more titles. EQ, PlanetSide, SwG.
In that regard a publisher can break or make a game. And in that light, SoE has a tremendous lot to learn from Blizzard. Blizzard’s trademark has always been Quality. A word not known in SoE’s vocabulary. So I think Vanguard could be a great, competing game if the publisher allowed the studio (Sigil Online Games) to produce and launch Quality. But I’m affraid I have to say that given the fact SoE is the publisher, I hold not much faith in the fate of Vanguard.
But again, I’m up for something new after 2.5 years of WoW and despite this being a SoE title I’m going to give it real try.
Thanks for your comment Jaxon. I think you’ve raised some very good points there.
If you’re up for something new, perhaps Lord of the Rings Online is something to consider. Failing that Warhammer Online is coming soon, and might make a good alternative.
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